pirate watch

we’ve been in the Straits of Malacca most of the day, but still up where it’s pretty wide. We couldn’t see land. The Straits run between peninsular Malaysia and the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Here’s a map for your edification:

All day we’ve been going crazy slow and we turned a number of times. There was a man-overboard drill for the crew this morning where they turn the ship around quickly, but the rest of the day we were just slowly turning and weaving. We’ll be bunkering tomorrow for refueling in Singapore. We are ahead of schedule for Singapore and they want to go through the narrow part of the Straits at night to avoid pirates, so basically we were just killing time. About 7 pm., we sped up. We were up to 29 knots about an hour ago, but are down to 23 now. Not sure why. They said we would go to maximum speed overnight, which we believe to be 34 knots. You can definitely feel that we are going faster, but the water is very calm. At 7 when we started to speed up, I was up on Mary & Michael’s balcony for another daughter’s birthday party (more cake). We could hear the noise as we sped up and we watched the wake get larger. But, walking around the ship, you can’t really tell the difference. And now it’s dark, so the Straits might be narrow enough to see land, but we can’t see. There are a number of boats around though … pirates, who knows?

There were crew outside in the space next to Mary & Michael’s balcony and they said they were on pirate watch (we asked). I don’t know whether or not to believe them, truly.

You can read all about the Straits of Malacca at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straits_of_malacca

From an economic and strategic perspective the Strait of Malacca is one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, an equivalent of the Suez Canal, or the Panama Canal. The Strait forms the main ship passageway between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, linking three of the world's most populous nations: India, Indonesia and China. The Strait carries 50,000 vessels per year, carrying between one-fifth and one quarter of the world's sea trade.

Piracy in the Strait has risen in recent years. There were about 25 attacks on vessels in 1994, 220 in 2000, and just over 150 in 2003 (one-third of the global total). After attacks rose again in the first half of 2004, the Malaysian, Indonesian and Singaporean navies stepped up their patrols of the area in July 2004.

There have been no recorded acts of piracy against passenger ships. They were all commercial ships. Good to know.